


a light in darkness, hope in woe

by Mertiya



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dagor Bragollach, Family Fluff, Fingon and Maedhros both have issues, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trans Character, Unplanned Pregnancy, Who is the Gil-gaDad, maglor is long-suffering, neither one will admit he has issues, to steal a tag from moiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:07:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26032381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: In the middle of the Dagor Bragollach, Maglor is busy trying to deal with another crisis.  Maedhros refuses to admit that any such concern exists.  Fingon arrives a day later, totally oblivious.
Relationships: Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo
Comments: 21
Kudos: 92
Collections: stories of our own: works featuring nonbinary and trans characters





	a light in darkness, hope in woe

**Author's Note:**

> with particular thanks to moiety and bettashark for helping me hammer this idea into a plot
> 
> title from the lay of leithian because where else do i get all my tolkien fic titles

It felt as if the world held its breath. On the high walls of Himring, Maglor shielded his eyes from the burning light of the dying sun at the horizon, looking out over the sea of enemies that threatened them. They would not attack until twilight, when the Sun failed and the Moon had not yet risen. Twilight would not save them, Maglor thought fiercely, for it did not matter when the hordes of the Enemy attacked, not with Maedhros to fight for. But it might kill more of the folk of Himring.

They had fought against worse odds, though not often. And certainly not with Maedhros bedridden. But it did not matter. Himring would not fall, Maglor thought. Himring would stand, and he would defend it to the death. The Enemy would not prevail.

“Maglor, I want more troops on the east side of the fortress. I don’t want us getting surprised by a pincer attack.”

“Right,” Maglor started to say and then realized who had said it and where he was. “Maedhros, what are you doing here?”

Maedhros’s only concession to his current condition was apparently leaning very slightly on the spear he had clutched in his left hand. “Directing a critical battle,” he retorted. “Where else should I be?”

“ _In bed_?”

“Don’t be stupid, Maglor,” Maedhros said irritably. “I am needed here.” His red hair streamed in the wind and he stopped leaning on the spear and held it up. A ragged cheer went up all around the wall. Maedhros smirked at Maglor. “You see?”

“You are in no condition to lead an army!” protested Maglor. “You are about to—”

Maedhros stood heavily on his foot, and he yelped in pain. “Not here,” Maedhros told him, and Maglor rolled his eyes. As if there were any point in attempting secrecy about this. As if any of their people would care at this point.

“You’re a fool,” he growled at his brother.

“Is this really the time for childish insults?” Maedhros responded with a wolfish grin. “Come now, brother, let us have a contest. Can you slay more orcs or will I still win, even with my…impediment?”

“I am not going to enter into any such—”

The light fled as the Sun vanished beneath the horizon. A chilly wind started up. On the plains below, a faint drumming sound began, eerie and unsettling. “They are preparing to attack,” Maedhros said calmly. “Ready yourselves!” he called. “For Himring!”

“ _FOR HIMRING_!” The roar echoed across the stone.

“For my idiot brother,” Maglor muttered to himself.

~

“Fingon, damn you—”

“I just want to make sure I’m not hurting you, love.”

“If you treat me like glass one more time, I swear I will jump out the window of your bedchamber.”

Fingon’s lips nipping at Maedhros’s neck. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and Maedhros knew how much was contained in that apology, and he wished—he _wished_ —there was some way to address it, to speak of it, but he could not. To speak of it was to reify it, and to reify it was to give Sauron more power.

“I’m sorry, too,” he murmured, hoping Fingon would understand anyway. “But if you don’t fuck me in the next five minutes, you will be even sorrier.”

Fingon laughed, a breathless sound laden with lust and too much sorrow. “How do you want me?”

Maedhros turned, grinding back against him in his lap. He wanted to see Fingon’s face. He wanted to see those eyes turn dark as sweat formed and dripped down his forehead, as Fingon’s pace grew stuttering and the climax twisted through him. He wanted, but he did not deserve, so he dipped his head. “Behind me,” he said in a low voice. He did not look at Fingon’s face, fearing disappointment.

There was no disappointment in Fingon’s voice and no unsteadiness in his hand as he drew it sharply down Maedhros’s back. “Put your face down and your hips up.”

“Yes,” Maedhros growled, and he did so. “And if you don’t fuck me hard enough—”

“You’ll either jump out the window or push me out of it. I know.” The teasing note in Fingon’s voice could almost have belonged to his young self in Valinor. Maedhros tried to let it. Tried to imagine them getting beyond their excited fumbling groping stage back then. Would it have made all that came after easier or harder?

He felt his cousin’s fingers probing at his entrance. “I don’t need this. Just—”

“Have you ever considered the meaning of the word patience?”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from _you_ —”

Fingon made another noise, something between a laugh and a protest. “A moment, then.” There was a rustling noise and the bed creaked as Fingon rearranged himself. “There.” _That_ was not his fingers, to Maedhros’s satisfaction. He clutched at the bedsheet with his good hand as Fingon entered him—swiftly, a little painfully, but thank Eru he wasn’t drawing it out as Maedhros had been afraid he might. Better to do this now or it might be years before he could get his mind and body to cooperate enough for it.

“Oof— _ngh_ ,” said Fingon, and his teeth bit down in Maedhros’s shoulder.

“Move, damn you,” Maedhros told him, and he rocked his hips back insistently, gasping as he felt Fingon’s erection sliding inside him. Fingon made a strangled noise and slid a hand round Maedhros’s chest, stroking down it and then his stomach.

“Give—give me a minute or I’ll—” His voice was ragged. Maedhros took pity on him, waiting with his head bowed forward and breathing harshly, still trying to adjust to the idea of Fingon inside him, wanting him, his voice so desperate and pleading—he didn’t deserve it. He _didn’t_. But, oh, how he wanted.

~

Maglor was keeping as much of an eye on Maedhros as was possible during the madness of a pitched battle. It was not an easy task. His brother was always fey during a battle, and a battle such as this—desperate, grim, weary, almost hopeless—that was the sort of battle for which Maedhros, perversely, came alive. He was everywhere, flinging ladders from the top of the battlements with his own hand, yelling instructions for when and where to tip boiling oil, hewing the heads from orcs mad enough to come within arms’ length of him. Even Maglor didn’t want to come within arms’ length of him like this. He was a mad, fey, fiery beacon of light.

But no matter how fine a warrior he was, fighting in this condition could so easily be fatally stupid. Maglor’s quick eyes had already seen how heavy Maedhros was on his feet. His reflexes were not slow, but they were off, his balance was overset. On at least one occasion, another Elf had grabbed the back of his mail shirt and pulled him back upright to keep him from going over the edge. Maglor had not been close enough, and he felt the blood chill in his veins at the thought. Such a fall—

Such a fall would kill them both.

A momentary lull came. The orcs pulled back to regroup. Maedhros peered after them, his sharp eyes scanning the horizon. Then Maglor saw him wince and hunch over, one hand pressed to his stomach. 

“ _Maedhros_.”

“It is all right. It is nothing. Give me a moment.” He winced again, stood upright, shaking his head. But Maglor knew that Maedhros did not give in to pain, even when he should—that half the time he did not even feel it. So he was watching closely enough to see a spattering of fluid against the stones at Maedhros’s feet. “Maedhros—” He leapt to his brother’s side. “You fool. You _cannot_ do this here.”

Maedhros gave him back a white-faced ghastly grin. “Where else would you suggest?”

“In. Your. Bed.” 

Infuriatingly, his brother still shook his head. “I must oversee the battle.”

“I thought you didn’t want anyone to know. If you still hold to that—”

“I CANNOT LEAVE THE FIELD!” Maedhros roared, his left hand clenching at the stones of Himring’s battlement to hold him up. “If they must know, then they will know,” he said, after a moment, his jaw clenching. “I will not hold the secret to my chest so tightly that it might injure the people who depend on me.”

“There is one,” Maglor hissed, taking his brother’s arm and trying to shake some sense into him, “there is one who depends on you _wholly_ , Maedhros, and who has no one else to care, and will you _please,_ I am begging you, _please_ , go to bed?”

“No,” Maedhros said, and Maglor sighed heavily, because that was the sound of Maedhros’s final word.

~

“ _Ahhhh_ —Fingon— _hghk_ —” Maedhros gasped intelligently as Fingon pulled partway out and slammed back in. Stars burst in front of his eyes, and the bedframe creaked. “Yes,” he moaned, clutching at the sheets and the pillow. It felt _good_ ; it felt right. For once. He was unmoored. He could almost forget everything that was happening—that had happened—outside of this moment. They could be back in Valinor.

“Maedhros,” Fingon moaned. The fronts of his thighs slapped against the backs of Maedhros’s as he thrust. “Eru, you’re beau—you’re amazing, Maedhros, I— _Maedhros_ —” His left hand was on top of Maedhros’s, twining their fingers together. It was an intimacy Maedhros felt he could just about manage to permit, particularly when he was moaning and hitching his hips back, and Fingon was slamming into him again and again.

“Harder,” he groaned.

“This is as hard as I— _nghk_ —” Maedhros had shaken off his hand, reached back and dug his nails into Fingon’s thigh. “Bastard,” Fingon gasped. He stroked a hand gently across Maedhros’s face, and Maedhros let him, because he did increase his speed, the thrusts hard enough they were now just on the edge of painful, Maedhros’s head bumping gently against the headboard with each movement.

There was so much of exchange between them these days: Maedhros all sharp edges and Fingon softer than ever, like a stone washed to smoothness by a constant, weary grinding. But it was enough, Maedhros thought, as his body rocked and he heard the words of endearment spilling from Fingon’s mouth, those that caught in his throat whenever he tried to return them—it had to be enough. It was more than he deserved, if only it was enough for Fingon. If only Fingon would stay.

He couldn’t say it. He could only hope Fingon knew. “Nelyo, I’m—I’m going to—” Fingon bit out raggedly from behind him. Maedhros’s hand tightened against his thigh, and he bucked back fiercely, hearing Fingon’s strangled moan and then the rush of warmth inside as Fingon spilled into him, claimed him, _remained_ with him.

They tumbled to the bed in a tangle of limbs. “Have you—” breathed Fingon in his ear.

“No.”

“Can I—” 

His hand rested, waiting, on Maedhros’s upper thigh. Maedhros hid his eyes in the crook of his own elbow, forcing himself to trust the one Elf he could. “Yes.”

~

The Sun rose on Himring. The walls were blackened and pocked with the bombardment of the Enemy, but they had held. Maedhros wiped sweat from his forehead, winced at the pain in his belly, and looked down across the sea of corpses in the field outside. “They’re retreating, my lord,” one of the archers told him, and Maedhros nodded shakily, then sat down.

“Where is Maglor?” he asked, and his voice came out weaker than he would have liked.

“I’m right here.” His brother’s arm beneath his. “Now will you go to bed?”

With fumbling fingers, Maedhros reached for the laces of his hauberk. “I don’t think there’s time, actually,” he said, trying to sound apologetic. “Could you do me a favor and help me get undressed enough for this?”

His brother’s teeth sounded as if they were grinding together, and Maglor began to mutter a series of angry imprecations.

“Don’t talk about our mother like that,” Maedhros told him sharply, and Maglor cuffed the back of his head lightly.

“Get a chair!” he called urgently, and a moment later, Maedhros was being helped back onto—well, it was a stool, really, but between that and the stone wall, it was enough for him to rest slightly as Maglor began to yank off his armor and then the clothes beneath. He hissed through his teeth, because with the weariness came the pain. He had felt far worse, but that was then, and this was now, and right now he certainly felt bad enough.

“Stay still,” Maglor told him. “Bring water,” he said to someone else.

“Water?” Maedhros asked weakly.

“You stink, and you’re about to stink more,” Maglor told him unsympathetically. “More pertinently, I imagine you’re thirsty.”

“Oh. Yes.” He pressed a hand across his stomach. Right on the battlements. _Everyone_ would know. “You little bastard,” he muttered at the child as his body contracted unpleasantly.

“Legs apart,” Maglor said. “I think. Here, you, fetch—” he paused. “Find someone in this damn fortress who has given birth or helped at a birth before or _something_!”

“Maglor. _Maglor_.” He was saying something else now, shouting rapid-fire instructions at one of the other Elves. Maedhros grunted and leaned his head against his brother’s shoulder. “You’re panicking,” he said in amusement. “And there’s no need. The Enemy is retreating.”

“ _That’s not why I’m panicking_!”

Maedhros snorted with laughter and then ground his teeth with pain. “It will not be much longer,” he said quietly.

He was not wrong. Before the light of the Sun had even reached the center courtyard of Himring, the early morning stillness was pierced with a thin, high wail.

~

Fingon was beyond weariness. Another battle ended; another loss. Morgoth’s forces had routed theirs nearly everywhere. He had not slept in what was probably on the order of three days. With their forces scattered, he did not even know what he would find at Himring. He did not know if Maedhros was safe, if Maedhros lived. _Eru_ , he prayed. _Let him live._

He rode hard, cresting over the top of the hill by Himring as the Sun crested over the horizon. There was a weary stillness in the whole land, as if the very stones were resting. He looked down into the valley, covered in yellowing and trampled grass and the decomposing bodies of Orcs. No one, it seemed, had had the time or patience to put them to the torch. He hoped that did not bode ill.

There was one lone sentry standing upon the walls of Himring, who greeted Fingon and called to the Elves at the gate to let him through. So the whole fortress had not fallen, at least. Fingon cantered through into the courtyard, where he heard, to his surprise, a familiar voice singing. It was not a song of triumph nor yet a song of grief, but a lullaby that Maglor sang in his clear, beautiful voice, quiet but not so quiet that it was not easy to hear in the almost silent courtyard,

_Sleep, little one_

_Thy heart be at peace_

_The day it is done_

_All toils are ceased._

_Stars shine above_

_Varda’s light be upon thee_

_In my arms with love_

_Slumber thou sweetly_

_Not the cock with his crow_

_Nor the nightingale’s cry_

_Not the cattle’s soft low_

_Nor the dog’s grumpy sigh_

_Nor any sound in the world_

_Keep thee from thy dreams_

_For the stars’ quiet blessing_

_In thy eyes it does gleam._

Stripping off his helmet, Fingon headed for the main entrance. Maglor’s voice grew louder as he approached, and then he saw the Elf, seated on the stone step with a tiny bundle in his arms. Fingon felt an awed smile growing on his face as he continued forward. In the midst of all this death and despair, a reminder that sometimes the world still produced something of great beauty.

He halted at Maglor’s side quietly. The little babe could be no more than a few days old; it had a fuzz of black fur-like hair, and it had the typical squashed, red-faced look of a very young newborn. It gurgled and waved tiny hands. Fingon was enchanted.

Maglor tenderly tucked the blankets around the child, then frowned and looked up, presumably at the sound of Fingon’s footsteps. He blinked up at Fingon, and then his face slipped from shock to greeting to some other emotion Fingon could not quite identify. He put a finger to his lips. “Well met, Findekáno,” Maglor drawled quietly, sounding—extremely sarcastic, for some reason.

“Is Maedhros all right?” Fingon blurted quickly.

“He’s sleeping,” Maglor replied, giving him another peculiar look. “He’s worn out.”

Surprising, given that Fingon had never seen Maedhros voluntarily take a break from anything, but then Fingon supposed it had must have been a particularly hard-fought battle. “And this little one?” Fingon said, crooning, wanting to pet the little child but knowing he mustn’t wake them. “Who had the misfortune to be in labor while everyone else was battling the enemy?”

Maglor gave him the single most venomous look Fingon had ever seen the usually most even-tempered of the Fëanorians employ. In that instant, he looked extraordinarily like his father. “ _Maedhros_ ,” he snarled.

Fingon stared at him. “What?” he said, after a moment, wondering if he had fallen asleep while riding.

“ _What do you mean, ‘what’_?”

“But—how—” Fingon looked down at the baby and back up to Maglor. “How could he—but—he’s—”

Maglor looked frankly murderous. “You mean you did not _know_?”

“Know _what_?” Fingon practically wailed.

“ _Findekáno son of Nolofinwë_ , you got my brother with child, rode off to battle, and _didn’t even know about it_?”

“This baby is _mine_?” Fingon sputtered. “Maedhros did _what_? But—but Elves can’t have babies unless they both decide to! Two men can’t have a baby!” He wanted to hold the baby. He _wanted_ it to be his, but it couldn’t be, and if it was Maedhros’s—but that was impossible. Maedhros would never want a child with someone else. A lover he might take—neither of them had, as far as Fingon knew, but they had both discussed it as something that might be done without hard feelings on either side—but he would not have a child with anyone but Fingon. 

Maglor dropped his head into his hand, sighing a very long-drawn-out, long-suffering sigh indeed. He got to his feet. “Walk with me,” he instructed. “Here, put your arms out. I’m going to give you the baby. Don’t drop him.”

Fingon made a noise in his throat like _meep_ , but he let the baby be laid gently in his arms, his heart thumping so loud he was afraid it would wake the child. Dark eyes blinked open momentarily; the baby blew a bubble and then settled back down to sleep. Fingon’s heart melted, and he felt tears springing to his eyes. “Oh, he has stars in his eyes,” he mumbled. 

“I should have known that you two of all people would be this idiotic,” Maglor told him as they went. “Elves generally don’t conceive if they don’t want to because there are ways to prevent conception, if you’re trying. Which you apparently were not.”

“Um,” said Fingon, feeling heat rise on the back of his neck.

“And as I am sure you are aware, my brother is a man with a womb, which does make him a somewhat unusual case.”

“I thought…” Fingon trailed off. When Maglor put it like that, it sounded obvious. 

“No, you didn’t.”

“No.” Fingon blew out his breath. “No, I didn’t think. Neither of us did.” _My son,_ he thought, his heart twisting and his eyes threatening to overflow. _My child, my little one, oh!_ He held him so tenderly, so carefully.

“And of course,” Maglor said with another sigh, “Of course, having discovered his condition, Maedhros did his best to hide it from absolutely everyone. Including you. Of course he did! Why would I think he had informed you? That would be the reasonable thing to do!” He growled something incomprehensible under his breath.

“I am rather frustrated, too, you know,” Fingon retorted. “I would have liked to have known we were about to become fathers.”

“I imagine he did not want to worry you,” Maglor said, slightly gentler. “Childbirth in our family has a history of being…” he trailed off. “But it was wrong of him, and you should make him apologize for it. Here.” He stopped at the door of Maedhros’s bedchamber.

Not bothering to knock, he let them both in. In the large double bed, Maedhros lay, curled on his side and snoring. “I’ll let you three have a moment, shall I?” Maglor asked, giving Fingon a firm push towards the bed.

“Has he a wet nurse?” Fingon asked in sudden concern.

“Yes, of course, and he is not hungry right now, and he does not need anything except for you not to drop him. Now go talk to Maedhros.”

Fingon seated himself on the side of the bed as Maglor exited the room. For a moment, he simply sat, looking down at his love and the tiny scrap of life in his own arms that the two of them had apparently created together. “Maedhros,” he whispered, tucking a red curl behind a pointed ear. “Nelyo, beloved.”

“Mrrfff?” Maedhros’s eyes shot open, and his hand grabbed for something beneath his pillow before his eyes caught Fingon’s, and he sighed with relief. “Oh, Findo, it’s you.”

“Yes, it is me,” Fingon said, trying to sound severe and failing somewhat. “Me and _our child_ , Nelyo, which has caught me rather by surprise.”

“Oh, yes.” Maedhros looked—he looked vulnerable, a little. Abashed as well. “I did not want you worry, but perhaps—”

“Perhaps you might have warned me before I walked in and found your brother singing my son a lullaby?”

“Perhaps.”

“ _Perhaps_.”

Maedhros lifted the stump of his right arm and caressed Fingon’s cheek very tenderly, then leaned forward and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. He did not say that he was sorry in so many words, but the gesture was plain enough. Fingon had no heart to be angry, at any rate. “Have you named him yet?” he asked.

“No, for I wasn’t certain how one goes about naming a baby with two fathers.”

“I suppose one of us gives him his mother-name.” Seeing that Maedhros looked as if he were about to set him on fire with his gaze, Fingon chuckled. “As you went to all the trouble of bearing him, perhaps I can play the mother for long enough to give him a name.”

Maedhros snorted but nodded, tucking his head against Fingon’s shoulder. “He certainly looks peaceful for the first time in his existence.”

“Is he a troublesome child? I suppose he must be, poor thing. There, there, little one, I have never known your father to be calm or still.” Fingon kissed the baby gently and got a sleepy mumbled cry in return and a waving of tiny fists. “Do you know, Nelyo—he has stars in his eyes? I wonder if they were caught there when he first opened them.”

For that, he got a fond, slightly exasperated look. “The Sun had well-risen by the time he was anywhere near opening his eyes in Middle Earth.”

“He has stars in them all the same.” Fingon kissed Maedhros as well. “So for a mother-name, I think I shall call him Gil-galad.”

“Gil-galad,” Maedhros echoed, apparently testing it out. “I’ve heard worse.”

The world might very well be ending, Fingon thought. The Union of Maedhros had taken heavy losses, and the Enemy was once again rearing his ugly head, but still he felt more hopeful than he had for many long, weary days. The stars in one child’s eyes might well forbode a brighter age: already he had seen a light that he had feared was lost forever in Maedhros’s face. He held them close and let himself hope.


End file.
